


ARITHMETIC: A Rat In The House Might Eat The Ice Cream

by Man Over Bot (Manniness)



Series: Necessary Sacrifice [1]
Category: Almost Human
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode Related, Extended Scene, John POV, John knows he's paranoid and he is good with that, John thinking thinky thoughts, Missing Dialog, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-04 22:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 16,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15851094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manniness/pseuds/Man%20Over%20Bot
Summary: John does the math: Captain Maldonado has a plan to bring InSyndicate down -- at least, John’s pretty sure she does -- and she needs John back on the force in order to make it happen, which (by the way) he is absolutely 100% willing to go along with.  And if partnering John with an emotive, over-sharing, out-dated DRN is how she wants to play it, well… fine.  John will deal.  As well as he ever does, anyway.Canon-compliant with additional dialog and missing scenes.*Chapters 1-4 previously posted as "Necessary Sacrifice" (August 25, 2018)





	1. Pilot

**Author's Note:**

> ARITHMETIC covers the thirteen episodes of the TV show and sets the stage for the second installment of "Necessary Sacrifice," which will pick up at the end of Strawman and hopefully answer some of our lingering questions about the world of Almost Human. (^_~)
> 
> FYI, this fanfic follows the production order of the episodes:  
> 1\. Pilot  
> 2\. You Are Here  
> 3\. Arrhythmia  
> 4\. Perception  
> 5\. Skin  
> 6\. Are you Receiving?  
> 7\. The Bends  
> 8\. Blood Brothers  
> 9\. Unbound  
> 10\. Simon Says  
> 11\. Disrupt  
> 12\. Beholder  
> 13\. Strawman
> 
> Welcome to my headcanon. (^_^)

Sandra Maldonado had earned her captain’s chair the hard way and it was rare that she could spare a moment for chitchat let alone disengage from the Delta Division bullpen for a little scenic detour.  Yet here she was on an upper level walkway to nowhere, lured away from her people and her desk, because she’d fought for him.  Her problem child of a detective.  Hell, she’d practically put John Kennex in a headlock and dragged him back to active duty.  So he figured now would be the time to push back… while she was feeling accomplished.

“You put in the rec order.  For Dorian,” John said, slowly building his case with irrefutable evidence.  Yeah, just look at him being a cop.  Like riding a bicycle.  “I checked out his service record.  It’s mostly redacted, but I saw that it was you who put in the request for me to get him.  Why?”

Captain Maldonado answered, “The DRN is good for you.”

John couldn’t argue that.  Not when the mere sight of MXs brought back the stutter of rapid gunfire, the crackle of electrical sparks, the scent of smoke and slick blood and no escape and Pelham--

She turned away and John straightened, locking his focus on her.  An administrator’s crisp suit and coiffed hair.  Yes, she was his captain, but she was also-- “Sandra…” -- his friend.  “You didn’t answer my question.  Why Dorian?”

And his friend Sandra answered: “Because he’s special.  Just like you.”  She smiled, warm and worried.  “See you at roll call.”

He watched her stride from the elevated hall, certain he wasn’t imagining it.  She was concerned.  About all the wrong things.

“Go easy on your partner,” she’d said the previous morning, indicating the MX that was now little more than scrap along the highway for the road crews to sweep up.  She hadn’t even yelled at him for it.  And she should have.  His first day back and he’d cost the department money it didn’t have to spare.  She’d merely passed him a celo with a brusque order to go see Rudy.

“You’re the only guy I trust here,” she’d told him right after teeing it up with a laundry list of all the reasons she shouldn’t trust him at all: “Kennex is suffering from depression, mental atrophy, trauma onset OCD, PTSD, and psychological rejection of his synthetic body parts.”  Long story short, John was a bourbon-greased, coffee-fueled mess, and Sandra had bullied him into coming back to work anyway.

She was one of the few friends John had left; she knew how he worked just as he knew how she worked.  She needed him here on her turf and she wasn’t about to let him go without a fight.

For her sake or his?  He could ask, but she already would have leveled with him if she could have.  He’d rather not twist her evasions into a shouting match.  At least not before he had the chance to enjoy the in-house coffee and doughnuts.

Maybe he’d just wait her out, let her play her hand.  Maybe he was reading too much into it, but he didn’t think so.  His captain had wanted John to give her an excuse to recommission that DRN and pair them together.  His friend insisted Dorian was special.  OK, fine.  John would play along.  Give her the benefit of the doubt.  Even though she was blatantly managing his return to work, at least she wasn’t going behind his back.  She was manipulating him to his face.  John could respect that.

So, the next morning, when he and his new partner were back on the road and Dorian posited, “I assume you want quiet mode, Detective?” John’s response was ready and waiting to be cued up:

“Not necessarily,” he admitted and then, glancing away from the windshield, he willfully implemented the next phase of Sandra Maldonado’s plans for him: “Call me John.”

A beatific smile and wash of emotion.  Jesus, what the hell kind of programming did this robot have, anyway?

_****“He’s special.  Just like you.”** ** _

Just like you.

The DRN’s programming was, without a doubt, the most dangerous kind: the kind John could get used to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the lovely readers who left kudos for me on the previous incarnation of this fic. I removed it from AO3 in order to give myself the chance to go back to the drawing board with it and reorganize my thoughts.
> 
> There's, like, a 70% chance of Jorian happening because I ship John and Dorian like whoa. I can't guarantee it, though, because the characters are going to be telling me what they want from their relationship. We could end up with epic friendship, bromance, asexual committed relationship, or all the sexytimes. I should have a better idea of where these dudes are going by the time we get to the end of ARITHMETIC.


	2. You Are Here

It was a bad day even before John slouched into the seat beside Bandage-Hands Jim in Anger Management.  Therapy just made it worse.  And then Richard’s MX tried to play teacher’s crime-scene pet by positing a magic bullet scenario with a 0.004% chance of occurrence.  Now that was some fantastic detective work right there.  Oh, yeah.  Taxpayers’ money hard at work, all right.

Detective Paul’s smug little grin was somewhat annoying.

The MX’s insistence on grandstanding was mildly irritating… until it went after Dorian.

“Detective Kennex, your DRN is inferior.  Its computing power is 18 billion trilihertz less than my own.”

Well, if that were true, then John’s previous MX should have seen its imminent fall from grace coming.  In the end, who had ended up under the wheels of a semi?  Not Dorian, that was for damn sure.

The MX reported obnoxiously, “It does not have the ability to rationalize, analyze or deduct.  His intelligence is subpar--”

OK, now this was just getting insulting.  Paul was even egging the thing on by winking.   _ ** **Winking.****_

“You are damaging your incident arrest quota.  By having an obsolete DRN--”

Obsolete?  Right, that was definitely crossing the line--

“You are continuing to listen to a retired old system, believing the rambling and illogical theories of your appropriately canceled partner--”

Dorian winced and, in the next instant, John felt himself reaching for his sidearm with numb certainty.

“If you would like, I can put in a request for you to be partnered with an MX-43--”

_****BOOM!** ** _

For supposedly advanced cop bots, the things sure couldn’t take a hint.

On the plus side, John’s mood had taken a sharp turn for the better.

“What is the matter with you?  You do not discharge your firearm in a public place unless you are in danger!”

Even the atomic blast of Maldonado’s anger was invigorating.  A fight.  Yes, God damn it, this was exactly what John’s day had been missing.  And he wasn’t gonna turn his nose up at the chance to scoff at Paul’s blatant posturing and show of false concern for an MX.

But then the little shit opened his big, stupid mouth one too many times: “What if I put a bullet in Dorian’s head?”

John lunged.

Paul grappled.

Their arms locked and John snarled, low and goading and rough, “Don’t even look at Dorian!”

Captain Maldonado barked, “Hey! Nobody is shooting any police officers.”

Police officers?  That was a laugh and a half.  MXs were bullet catchers.  And that assessment was only possible because John was feeling vindicated and generous.

“You better watch your ass,” Paul snarled on his way out the door and back to the corner of Fuck Off and Mind Your Own Business.  “Your partner better watch his ass, too.”

John laughed it off with a mockery of concern (“What do you think he wants to do to my ass?”), but there wasn’t much in the way of humor happening over the next forty-eight hours.

There was actually a lot of confusion, which John did not appreciate at all.

First, there was the tracking software at Trope; it identified Dorian as “Dorian 0167.”  Weird, right?  Dorian’s name was public domain… had to be… otherwise the Trope software would have called him DRN-0167.  John had no idea what the hell he was supposed to do with that.

And then the bot promptly got himself shot protecting Kira Larsen from the same weapon and likely the same people who had killed her boyfriend Anton Cross.  Hell, John’s threat to shoot Dorian if he didn’t stop singing that obnoxious K-pop song in Rudy’s lab -- he’d been joking, damn it -- but the look on Dorian’s face…

Shit.

John would rather deal with that InSyndicate asshole Reinhardt and the fact that Sandra -- John’s _****friend****  _Sandra -- seemed to be considering the absolutely insane option of offering that scumbag a deal.

On the threshold of the evidence storeroom just hours earlier, Reinhardt had brought up Anna without any prompting whatsoever.  With a single look at John, he’d volunteered, “Your girlfriend Anna would be very impressed to see you walking around.  You do know that’s not her real name?”

Was InSyndicate that small of a world that everyone was up in everyone else’s business or was John really that important in the grand scheme of their operations?  And if that last bit were true, did it apply to past, present, future... or some combination thereof?

Reinhardt had jeered, “Wouldn’t you just love to get your hands around that chick’s throat?”

The InSyndicate shit talked like he had an ax to grind with Anna.  Not that John couldn’t understand the impulse, but he’d thought she and Reinhardt were allies.  No honor among backstabbing thieves, apparently.

What a novel concept.

Really, John shouldn’t have been surprised.

But there was something else that _****should have****  _surprised him.  Something about the shouting match in Maldonado’s office between John and Richard Paul -- it dug away at John, itching like a God damned splinter.

In the aftermath of the gunfight, John’s ears still ringing with the rapport of gunshots in the corridor of the memory shop, John suddenly realized what had been needling him:

Paul hadn’t once referred to Dorian as a DRN or a synthetic or even an “it.”  With tempers running high, when it would have been understandable for prejudices to be word-vomited all over the roomba’ed carpet, it hadn’t been Paul to devolve into ugly name-calling.

No, that delightful honor belonged to John: _****“I will dispose of it with the same degree of compassion that I would a toaster that burns my toast.”****_

Jesus.  How many bullets had Dorian caught on this case?  Too many.  And what was worse, John had treated him as though that was Dorian’s job.  His primary function or what have you.  And Dorian had let him.  Because--

_****“You like me.”** ** _

_****“No, I don’t.”** ** _

_****“Yes, you do.”** ** _

_****“No.”** ** _

_****“You definitely do.”** ** _

That damn overjoyed grin.

It wasn’t fair.  None of this was fair: not Anton Cross being extorted, his girlfriend Kira Larsen and her little girl Aimee threatened; not Kira being made to feel as though her only hope was to scrub Anton from her memory; not John’s initial assumption that Anton had willingly developed and sold the guidance system to black market arms dealers -- but wasn’t it always easiest to believe the worst of others?  Anticipate betrayal?  Hell, even Detective Stahl had suggested that Kira had lied about the woman she’d seen Anton meeting with while John had merely wondered if she’d gotten the name wrong.

Of course John should have known better -- a woman wouldn’t fumble the name of the female headhunter trying to recruit her successful boyfriend.

But.

It really wasn’t fair of John to pick and choose when to treat Dorian like his partner and when to treat him like an MX.  Not when any indication that John actually gave a damn about the DRN made the android practically beam with happiness.

Right.  OK.  John was the supposed to be the better man here, so it was on him to shoulder the blame.

Facing Dorian toe-to-toe in the dingy hallway of the illegal memory shop, he opened his mouth and said, “You’ve certainly taken your fair share today.”

Oh, yeah.  That was one hell of an apology.  Award-winning.

“I’ll send you the bill,” the DRN gamely joked back, but all John heard was Dorian saying, smug as all get-out,  _ ** **“It’s OK, John.  I like you, too.”****_

God damn it.

And hearing Kira Larsen tell John about Anton’s vow -- “He said that he would win me over” -- sure as hell didn’t help matters because wasn’t that what Dorian was programmed to do?  Win over his current partner for the sake of his own survival?  Or, if not survival, then for the sake of a good working relationship and increased incident clearance rate?

 _ ** **“You’re lucky I want to be a cop so bad.”****  _ And then Dorian had grinned, bashful and boyish, into the steam of boiling noodles against a backdrop of incessant rain.

Jesus.  What a mess.

What was Sandra thinking, pairing John with a boy scout?

He was too old for this bullshit.

So, really, was it any wonder John let Valerie give him an energy chew because, yes, he surely needed it.  He didn’t call her out on implying he was as unprepared and rundown as he definitely was.  Instead, he used the pen that Kira had given him out of misplaced appreciation and returned fire with a cute note written on actual paper.  So he was old fashioned.  Let her deal with that.

Too bad John still didn’t have a clue how to deal with himself.


	3. Arrhythmia

When the cruiser’s radio fizzled out in the middle of a catchy song, John didn’t shoot it, but he did smack it a bit.  This was progress, and Dorian called him a caveman.

John took it as a compliment.  “You know what, you should break a rule or two now and then,” John challenged.  “Look good on you.”

Dorian spooled out his advice in the worst possible way.  Naturally.  Because John’s life was just that great.

Lowering his arm, John looked from his phone to the geyser of pressurized water that had been safely contained by a red fire hydrant until an SUV had rolled into it, its driver abandoning the vehicle before engaging either brake or gear as Dorian’s bestest buddy _**du jour** _ had tackled a suspect unlawfully.  God damn outdated case files… which a hospital maintenance bot should not even have access to in the first place.  And now John’s ear was blistering in the wake of Maldonado’s fury: a watch drone knocked out of the air by a freakishly on-target, airborne fire hydrant and a smashed MX plus damage of private property.  Yup, the drone, the MX, and some poor schmuck’s car were nothing but a tangle of metal bound for the scrapyard.

What a spectacular day this was turning out to be.

Why he hadn’t simply washed his hands of both androids before it had gotten to this point…  Well, sure, there was probably a reason. That John did not care about at the moment.

At the moment, he just wanted Dorian to _**stop** **.**_

He faced off against his android partner as they stood in front of the cruiser, their passenger sitting obediently in the backseat and chaos reigning only half a block away, and there was no way Dorian was wrenching them both past this moment before John was good and ready.  This was it.  Equal footing.  Level playing field.

“Why?” John wearily demanded.

Why would Dorian think -- for even one second -- that it would have been cute to commandeer the cruiser right out from under John in a fit of juvenile rebellion?

And then Dorian had countered John’s sarcasm with insult: _**“Sorry.  I was distracted by the sound of good police work--”** _

Promptly following up with a gleeful demonstration of how well Dorian had John figured out: **_“He’s grumpy on the outside, morose and malcontent on the inside…”_ **

And when John had tried to play nice, Dorian had started up with that obnoxious, bored preschooler puffy mouth noise… also known as “the cherry on top of John’s shit sundae.”

If John channeled his inner teenager, he could understand the compulsion to show off, the urge to impress a new friend.  But this was too damn much.

Dorian owed him, damn it.  John had taken the heat for this mess.  Because John wasn’t the type of asshole to throw his partner -- synthetic or not -- under the bus by muttering the dreaded M-word: _**malfunction.** _

Well, as long as the partner in question wasn’t an MX.

So.  Here they were.  An outright refusal at the onset of this insanity hadn’t worked.  John had also struck out with sarcasm, goading, and tact.  Now he was reduced to **_asking._ **

God damn it.

At wits’ end, John flung out an arm toward the hospital DRN watching them contritely from inside the car.  “Why are we taking Mr. Fix It for a ride-along?”

Dorian somberly answered, “When I was decommissioned, the second before it happened, I just kept thinking, ‘I really hope there’s someone there to wake me up again.’  I just want to be a cop, man.  I just want to be here.  And then, you woke me up.  It was you.  You were that person for me, John.”

God damn it.  Still not fair.

“Well, we all make mistakes,” John quipped, glancing away.

Dorian’s lips twisted into a sad smile.  The line of his mouth rippled with disappointment before curving with acceptance that John pretended not to see.  Dorian said, “I want to be that person for him.”

Clinging to resentment with all the bullheaded stubbornness he possessed, John growled, “OK, fine.”

And, really, what else could he say?  This was important to Dorian.  Being a person was important.  Not even John was heartless enough to deny a self-aware machine that.

But.

Nothing good would come from their little jaunt -- showing this refurbished DRN what he was missing, what he used to have but couldn’t anymore.  How would this help anybody?  It wouldn’t.

But Dorian was dead set on this trip through What Might Have Been, so they’d see it to its inevitable end.  Still, John wasn’t capitulating without clear conditions: “I swear, he so much as steps one more foot outside this vehicle, and I’m tossing him over the Wall.  I’m gonna be that guy for him.”

That guy.  John at least got to be that guy for the duped heart surgeon.  Watching Keating’s expression fold in on itself as he saw through the lies -- it sent John back to a hospital bed, commiserating with his mangled flesh and groping fruitlessly for a missing leg, waiting for Anna to stop by and sit at his side and tell him that everything was going to be--

“Look, I understand.  You were manipulated,” John commiserated with genuine sympathy for the gullible twit.  John had certainly been there, done that.  It was a big club; he wasn’t the only member.  “It’s not easy to accept that.”

Another thing John could definitely relate to.  DRN-494 was currently sitting at John’s desk in the bullpen, and there was no way John could convincingly plead ignorance of Dorian’s pet project.

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t give it his best shot, though.

Soldiering onward, John impressed upon Keating, “Now don’t you want a chance to make that right?”

The surgeon did.

At the end of the day, John found himself at a similar crossroads.  They’d made it through ride-along hell: DRN-494 was back at the hospital where he worked, Dorian was in the passenger seat where he belonged, and John was still employed.  Hell, the cruiser was even in one piece.  John would call that a win.

It was DRN-494 who had lost, and it was Dorian who would have to deal with it.

Memories made through struggle and strife and then erased with a keystroke.  The same memories briefly restored before being taken away again.

John’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

Instead of informing Dorian that he had no right to pout like a recalcitrant toddler who hadn’t gotten his way because Dorian had, in fact, gotten _**every damn thing**_ he’d wanted and to hell with the consequences, John quietly asked, “You OK?”

There was a brief pause.  How many computations were crammed into that moment?

Dorian eventually replied, “You know what would make me feel better?”

John strongly suspected he was walking into something very regrettable when he answered, “What?”

Angling his face toward John, Dorian appealed shamelessly, “If you let me drive…”

John hesitated, visibly waffled, and hope sprang eternal from Dorian’s boyish expression.

“No,” John decided firmly.

It was cruel but necessary because, damn it, John had to draw the line somewhere.  John was the human here.  He was responsible for the cruiser and he was responsible for the well-being of the people in its vicinity and he was responsible for Dorian -- and the DRN had gotten dangerously close to being out of line on this case -- but also, the car was John’s **_domain._ **   Even if the whole damn world and his own sorry life were careening out of control, at least John’s hands were steady on the wheel.  If memory served correctly, then according to Special Relativity, that would make John “relatively” stable.

He had to count his wins where he could.


	4. Perception

“I’ve got it under control.”

Five words that ultimately meant nothing when John suddenly blacked out behind the wheel of the squad car in broad fucking daylight and then came to with a jolt upon impact.  They’d crashed into a construction site and made another fantastic mess.  A metal pole now skewered the car.  Dorian was perfectly -- deathly -- still.

John’s heart slammed into his throat.  How much of his partner’s skull lay smashed and scattered in the backseat?

None, as it turned out.  Dorian swiveled stiffly to face him and John winced at the sight of electrical sparks and static sputters where his right ear had been clipped and rubbed bare of synthetic skin.

John sucked in a breath.

“Yeah,” Dorian agreed tersely.  “You’ve got it totally under control.”

Dorian may as well have called “Bullshit.”   There was no escaping the reek.  John shut his mouth before he tasted it on his tongue, too.

Never again.  He’d promised himself he wouldn’t lose any more men who depended on him.  John’s hands were still on the wheel, yet Dorian’s quick response had saved them both and -- God damn it -- John had promised himself he’d never be here again, staring into the face of his own failure.

John didn’t apologize.  Dorian had warned him about the possibility of blackouts while taking Membliss.  Asking for forgiveness would imply John believed himself worthy of absolution.

Instead, he moved them both back to normal, timing it so that his words came out as they approached the front door of the Wollenberg residence: “It doesn’t look that bad…”

The precisely applied bandage covering the damaged ear angled closer as Dorian leaned in to demand, “I’m sorry.  Could you speak up, please?”

Which was definitely as close as Dorian would ever get to telling John that everything was OK.

Not enough.  Not good enough.  Not nearly good enough.

As they left the Wollenbergs’ with Julian in custody, John moved to the driver’s side door out of habit.  Had Membliss become a habit?  This rabid, morbid thirst to remember everything, every mistake, every lie, every failure -- when had the ache turned into a burning inferno?

Sandra’s message brought him to a halt before he could reach for the door handle: _****I need to talk to you after shift.****_

Fuck.  The woman had impeccable timing.  
  
John looked up and over the roof of the car at Dorian.  Dorian who would ride shotgun without hesitation because the car was John’s domain.

“D, you drive,” John informed him, tossing the keys Dorian’s way.  And because he trusted Dorian more than he trusted himself right now, he grumbled, “Can’t be any worse than me blacking out.”

The burgeoning grin on Dorian’s face -- God damn it, you’d think John had just told him Santa Claus was real.  Hell, Dorian probably believed that romance wasn’t dead, too.

“Would you consider yourself a romantic?” Officer Reynolds inquired with an idle tone.  As if the question wasn’t important.  But John wasn’t as big of an idiot as the asswipes from Internal Affairs believed him to be.  There was no way to answer that question decisively without digging the hole deeper.

“What are you saying?”  Might as well try to get this sanctimonious jerkwad to show his hand.  It wasn’t as if John’s perfectly shitty week -- _****“…not good enough”****_  -- could get much worse at this point.

Reynolds obliged.  “Just through events and fate that maybe someday you might meet the person that you’re supposed to be with.  Because if that’s the way you look at things, then maybe that type of thinking might’ve prevented you from seeing something you might not have seen if you didn’t want it to happen so badly.”

This moment.  This breathless, absence of sound was the knife being twisted for good measure.  John couldn’t say he was surprised.

“She infiltrated you,” Reynolds belligerently summarized.  “Gave InSyndicate precinct files.  And there were consequences.”

Consequences.  Yeah.  Death and pain and loss and Dorian’s sheared right ear.

Anna and InSyndicate were still fucking with John even now.  Only this time, he was letting it happen.  He was making it happen all by himself.

Sandra had warned him to let it go before it burned him up, down, out, and sideways: _****“This is dangerous.”****_

Having seen the manifestation of Mrs. Hoving’s obsession -- and now seeing those same manically scribbled notes mirrored in John’s own home -- he realized he was drowning.  He was drowning in the past, and if he didn’t start kicking and swimming and fighting for what little bit of goodness that still somehow miraculously remained in his life, he’d end up trapped in the darkness, gaze forever turned inward and upon a past that could never be changed.

So he banished every scrap -- every post-it and scribble and shard of memory -- to the digital trash bin.  Clean slate.

He thought of Dorian.  Benedict Android, John had called him, feeling utterly betrayed by Dorian reporting John’s movements to Captain Maldonado.

_**“Don’t ever tell anybody where I am, where I was, what time I arrived, or what time I left.”** _

_**“Captain Maldonado is our commanding officer.”** _

_**“She’s on a need-to-know basis.”** _

Now at a distance that made retrospection possible, he winced; had John really implied that he didn’t trust Sandra?  It had certainly sounded like it.

Dorian had warned him of the side-effects of Membliss.  John was pretty sure he could solidly stamp BLACKOUTS and PARANOIA on his bingo card.  At a right angle to the MENTAL ATROPHY, TRAUMA ONSET OCD, PTSD, and PSYCHOLOGICAL REJECTION OF HIS OWN SYNTHETIC BODY PARTS.

Little wonder Dorian had freaked out on him.

“You’re not just a badge number and questionable haircut,” Dorian had scolded.

That was true.  John was the guy who had woken Dorian up, who’d stood over him as the android had gasped in that first breath, awareness rushing through his processors, blue eyes lighting up and his voice hoarse with disuse and maybe a little dust, rasping and grasping for a touchstone: “How long was I out?”

_**How long was I out?** _

For Dorian, being cast adrift and lost was a simple, straightforward matter of consciousness denied.  A total lack of data.  A dearth of perception.  As an android, he didn’t know what it felt like to become lost in the no man’s land that hovered between “on-line” and “off.”

In spite of all the nuances that the DRNs had been programmed to interpret and intuit, one glance at Dorian’s horrified and baffled expression at the sight of Mrs. Hoving’s war room had been enough for John to realize that Dorian didn’t understand the Rage.  He couldn’t comprehend why humans would gleefully throw themselves into the flames of revenge.  John could.  Because he felt it, too.  It twisted and spun in John’s gut, like the threads of a massive screw digging deep and gouging him out from the inside.  And the more it destroyed, the more John needed it to destroy _**more**_ because, if it didn’t -- if it stopped whirling and driving, he’d be left with nothing, strung out and empty.

Adrift.

And that was worse than the scorching heat of the inferno.  Worse than the razor wire shredding his innards.  Worse than the acid eating through his soul.

But it wasn’t just John’s life on the line here.  John’s “off” switch was metaphorical.  Dorian’s wasn’t.  And at the slightest inconvenience, it could be flipped.

Wasn’t that why Dorian doubted the accuracy of the Luger Test?  Because it wasn’t really a test at all -- it was an _****excuse?****_

God damn it.

A soft beep -- an incoming call -- pulled John from the past.  McGinnis had found something.  The nesting dolls -- that stupid, kitschy gift of Anna’s -- that John had always assumed were supposed to be some kind of joke -- a statement on his fortification of emotional walls or a dig at his layered personality?

Either (or neither) way, they certainly took first prize in the category of Gifts That Kept On Giving.  They disguised a radio transmitter.  A listening device that John had been harboring both in plain sight and in ignorance for the last two years.  A listening device that had sent its most recent transmission a mere seven hours ago.

John was thankful that he wasn’t prone to talking to himself.  He was grateful that Sandra almost never called to talk shop.  He was aware of just how closely the past still dogged his heels.

Paranoia.

John sure as hell didn’t need Membliss to make it happen.


	5. Skin

“Brown eyes,” John admitted, describing his hypothetical date.  “Soulful.”

Dorian prompted, “Height?”

John shrugged, relaxed and safe behind the wheel.  Driving, zooming along, going places.  It felt good to imagine someone in his life.  Hope.  Hope felt damn good.  “Average height.  I like brunettes.”

“Would you date anyone in your profession or would you prefer to date someone outside of it?”

“Sure, either way.”  And then John volunteered, “I like smart women, you know?  Women that are smarter than me.”

“That won’t be hard.”

Hah.  Smart ass.

Before John could share that observation, Dorian offered one: “You are aware that you just described Detective Stahl, right?”

Valerie Stahl.  A Chrome -- beautiful, intelligent, and a detective under Sandra Maldonado’s command.

John really wished he were a man who believed in coincidences.

He practically leaped at the distraction of an incoming call.  Unfortunately, the caller was none other than Valerie.  John stuttered and fumbled and generally made an ass of himself.  Thankfully, Dorian immediately dived into magnifying the mortification and expounding on John’s embarrassment.

Teasing was safe.

The thoughts now plaguing John were not.

John did indeed have a type and Valerie definitely fit it.  At least, superficially.  A fact that Sandra, as one of John’s closest friends, was well aware of.

A fact that Anna and, presumably, InSyndicate also knew.  And thanks to the listening device in John’s apartment, his recovery and movements might have been charted as well.

For the first time, John wondered just how Detective Valerie Stahl had found her way to the Delta Division.  And he had to wonder about the timing of it all.

John bit back a wince at the memory of and energy chew and a handwritten note. Val had called him midway through the Anton Cross case to tell him: “I’ve got something for you.”  And how stupidly thrilled he’d been, assuming she’d meant “for John” instead of “for Detective Kennex.”  He’d tried to play it off, but he knew he’d failed.  Shit.  It was too late to not be obvious.

The Recollectionist had told John that he seemed like a desperate man.  He was.  Desperate to remember.  Desperate to forget.  Both made him an easy mark and the space between John’s shoulders was suddenly itching like there was a bullseye tattooed into his skin.

The last time John had been on the receiving end of a brunette’s soulful, dark eyes, things had not ended well.

Yeah.  Understatement of a lifetime.

Perhaps John was overly paranoid, but perhaps not.  What if Valerie Stahl had been relocated in the Delta Division in order to draw John’s attention, gain his confidence, and ultimately destroy what was left of his world?

Of course, that assumed John was even worth the effort of a conspiracy.

Still, whether Valerie was trustworthy or not was irrelevant.  John couldn’t unthink thoughts like these.  Not now and maybe not ever, no matter how lonely or how stupidly hopeful he might be feeling.

Hell, even the simplest connection with another person was never going to be like it used to be.

And not just because John had been burned.  Charred.  Damn near incinerated.

During interrogation, when the sexbot Vanessa’s hand curved gently around his prosthetic leg, John didn’t feel it, not the way he should have.  There was a vague pressure and an empty tingle as his mind told him what he should be feeling but couldn’t.  Mostly, what he felt was loss.  It made it very easy to surrender point position when Dorian stepped forward to engage her and gently inquire about the remains of the sexbot that they’d discovered in the industrial complex stairwell.  Charlene.

The sexbot Vanessa eventually asked, “Do you know where Charlene is?”

Dorian nodded slowly.  “Yes.”

“Can I see her?”

“Why do you want to?” Dorian replied, echoing John’s own thoughts with eerie accuracy.

“I don’t know.”  It was the most real thing Vanessa had said yet.  Uncertainty -- it was a hell of a thing for an android to have in common with humanity.

Dorian gently explained, “You were designed to bond with people.  That’s what you were developed to do.  To notice when they’re there.  That also means you notice when they’re not there.  That’s why you want to see her.  That’s what you’re feeling.”

Try as he might, John could not figure out how that was any different from what humans felt.  Change the word “design” to “predisposed” and exchange “developed” for “socialized” and, yeah, it was a pretty damn apt description of human interpersonal relations.  Ironic as hell that an android had phrased it better than John ever could have.

Not that he’d be reaching out to humanity anytime in the near future.  Not so long as everyone was a suspect and John felt hunted, clinging to shifting shadows in the dark.

Alone.

Alone was better, anyway.  Alone was something he could control.  John was good with alone.  Hell, he and Alone were best buds.  It let him watch the game in peace.  It didn’t nag when he had a glass of bourbon at eleven in the morning on his day off.  Hell, he could spend as much time as he wanted in the bathroom washing his hands over and over, picking the grime -- imagined or not -- out from under his fingernails, sculpting his hair into patterns that felt familiar.  Alone was the best thing since the invention of noodles.

But.

In the midst of raiding the Albanians’ skin lab, when John felt a hand press between his shoulder blades through the Kevlar -- a signal from his partner showing that he had John’s back -- John knew it was Dorian.

It was _****Dorian.****_   Not DRN-0167.  Not John’s android partner.  Not a robot.  Not a synthetic.

Just Dorian.

Familiar.  Trusted.

God damn it.


	6. Are You Receiving?

John denied taking Dorian’s advice about the olive oil.  He was also late in picking Dorian up.  Then, John hung up on Captain Maldonado when she ordered them out of the Sanderson Building.  Already Dorian had professed to _****loving****_  three irritating facets of John’s character and it wasn’t even noon yet.

Well, hell.  John’s coffee warmer liked him.  It was an established fact.

There weren’t many people -- human or synthetic -- who would offer unconditional acceptance of John’s quirks and rough edges and flaws.  But what choice did Dorian really have?  Without John, the android was off the force.  Shut down.  Shipped off to space.

Dorian was just making the best of a situation that was preferable to the alternatives.

Dorian was making a choice.

The observation nearly knocked the wind out of John.  Would have, too.  Except their only eye witness caller -- a woman named Paige -- was trapped on the twenty-fifth floor with the gunmen, hiding in a supply closet, and he had to be steady for her.

He had to be steady for Dorian, too, because it turned out that however much choice or free will Dorian had, it wasn’t nearly enough.  Not if he felt compelled to narrate android field repairs, talking John through clipping the appropriate synthetic tendon (presumably so that power could be successfully rerouted) and restore Dorian’s motor functions.  Dorian placed his well-being in John’s care not because he trusted John, but because he couldn’t allow John to proceed alone and Dorian couldn’t abandon the hostages to their fate.

No choice at all, really.

John understood that.

“What are you doing?” Dorian demanded as John made for the nearest exit.

“Sticking to the plan.  We’re going up.”

“John,” he objected, smooth and reasonable and infuriatingly calm, “they know we’re here.  They’re expecting us to come up the stairs.  We won’t make it to the twenty-fifth floor alive.”

Alive.  That was just the DRN colloquialism program running.  Wasn’t it?

“You heard him,” John argued, thinking of the beeping light bomb and the lives on the line.  “We have no choice.”

“I don’t have a choice,” Dorian corrected him and the truth of it hooked deep into John’s belly and tugged hard.  “People’s lives are in jeopardy.”

“You’ve been shot.  Your head’s full of bubble gum.  You can’t do this alone.”  Truthfully, Dorian shouldn’t be forced to do it at all.  Not without an able body to work with.

John thought of his leg and smothered a snort.  Maybe between the two of them, they’d make one whole person.  Just barely.

Dorian insisted.  “I have to.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”  Because, damn it.  One whole person.

“You can’t.  I’m designed to do this, John.”

Well, John wasn’t designed to leave his partner in a lurch.  Abandoned.  Alone.  Left for dead--

As Dorian pulled himself up the elevator cables toward the ventilation ducts above the twenty-fifth floor, John sprinted back to the body.  Gregor Stone.  It was time to suit up.

John arrived in that breathless, gut-wrenching moment before it was Too Late.  The trigger that ended the stand-off came from the gun in John’s hands.  Thank God.

Dorian was a mess, but he was alive and able to wrench the detonator from the bomb; the hostages were alive and, at the end of the day, that was what it came down to.  They were alive.

“Thank you for what you did back there,” Dorian quietly said as the cruiser whooshed through puddles of street light.

Back there?  The field repairs?  The cavalry charge to the twenty-fifth floor?  The intervention in the bullpen?  All of it?

John shook his head.  “Don’t mention it.  Besides, no one messes with my coffee warmer.”

A needful joke.  A return to normal.  Well, as normal as things could be when John’s entire body was still aching from the strain and stress of the day and Dorian still had bullet holes in him.

“Hey, John, you know that story you told Paige: when you fell through the ice as a kid?”

John glanced Dorian’s way and waited.

“When that gun was pointed at my head, I felt something similar.”  Speaking to the darkness beyond the passenger window, Dorian confessed, “I--I didn't want to die.”

And this, right here, was why John had fumbled through field repairs and raced up ten flights of stairs wearing a face-maker and thumped Dorian on the arm, practically shoving him out of the precinct before Rudy could bully Dorian onto a table and erase all the damage.

Dorian continued, “I know it’s not the same with me, but…”

“Hey, dead is dead.”  And even androids needed time to process trauma before they could move on.  Didn’t they?  Dorian might not be organic, but he wasn’t just a race car, either.

“Yeah,” Dorian sighed.  “I suppose so.”

He supposed so.  Jesus.

This bullshit from the guy who had said, “We won’t make it to the twenty-fifth floor alive.”  We.  Alive.

Well, that was Dorian’s fight and Dorian’s argument to make and defend.  John wasn’t going to do it for him.


	7. The Bends

“Cooper was my friend,” John explained, dismissing Dorian’s skepticism.  Dorian could play Devil’s advocate all he liked.  John wasn’t making a secret of the fact that he was biased.  “And until someone can prove any different, he deserves my allegiance.”

Trevor Cooper had been a good cop.  A friend.  Once upon a time.  Though John hadn’t seen the man in years, since long before the doomed raid on InSyndicate and the coma and all the rest of it.

Somehow, that made John’s sense of failure even more acute.

Finding Cooper’s cabin in shambles seemed a fitting metaphor.  And he couldn’t even help the man’s wife Kelly by putting things back together.  Crime scene.  Damn it.  Maybe after everything was scanned and tagged and archived, Kelly might let John give her a hand with this mess.

“Whoever turned over this place was probably looking for the same thing that we are,” he grumbled, pushing past the regret and kicking guilt aside.

“John, if the same people that killed Cooper came here, that means they knew details about his life.”

Shit.  “Put a--”

“Put a protection agent outside Kelly’s house.  You got it.”

“Thanks, man,” John mumbled, distracted by splintered glass in a photo frame.  A single pressure point and radiating, spider web fracture.  Like a gunshot to the head.  This one was targeted over the image of John’s smiling face, standing at attention in his dress blues beside Coop.  Graduation day.  End of the line.

God damn it.

Dorian replied, “You’re welcome, my friend.”

“Great, now we’re friends.”  He could feel Dorian’s disappointment like a bee sting between the shoulder blades, but John didn’t take it back.  Wouldn’t.  Couldn’t.  Coop was dead and if this was what happened to John’s friends, then it was better for Dorian not to count himself as one of them.

They’d just stick to razzing on each other.  John would make Dorian warm his coffee and Dorian would dare John to eat live slugs and--

Oh, hell.  That was pretty much the definition of friendship.  For twelve-year-olds.  
  
John was too heartsick to fight it and, with his next breath, shared: “Cooper was the only person in my class who could outrun me, out-shoot me.”

“So there were only two people in your class?” Dorian teased, and John felt the razor wire banding across his chest ease just enough to allow for breath.

A breath.  Something John very much appreciated as he ran down the Bishop -- Coop’s own captain Alexio Barros -- in that dingy underground tunnel and put two bullets in his midsection… and then a third right between the eyes.  Execution style.

John still hadn’t paid InSyndicate back for the lives they’d taken -- the friends John had unknowingly thrown into the breach -- but he could do this for Coop.  He could avenge one friend.

It wasn’t much.

It was going too far and crossing the line.

It was a fucking start.


	8. Blood Brothers

When Rudy had warned John about the DRNs having quirks, over-sharing had been the last thing on John’s mind.  Of all the hopelessly, harmlessly awkward issues to have.

Jesus.

“Dude, put it away!” John ordered, eyes fixed on the road as the tinny taste of horror exploded over the back of his tongue.  Pulling aside a shirt collar to show the absence of a chest plate was one thing.  Whipping out a monster dick in the passenger seat during broad daylight was a whole other something else.  What the hell?

“Wait a minute,” John gasped, baffled.  “You’re an android.  What do you do with it?”

“Probably the same thing you do with yours,” Dorian replied morosely.  “Nothing.”

Well, it was better to have something to do nothing with than it was to have nothing at all.  Wasn’t it?

John recalled the unclothed MX with a wince.  Ugh.  “Hey.  I do plenty with mine.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Plenty.”  Spoken like a suspect who was lying through his shit-licking-stained teeth.

“What’s up with Detective Stahl?”

“What about her?”  John regretted the words the instant they left his mouth because this was the exact opening Dorian had been angling for all along--

“The way she smiles at you.  The way she says your name -- ‘John…’”

Ugh, God.  Did Dorian have to spit out a recording of her voice?  That was just too creepy.  “Don’t.”  And awkward and it poked at old paranoid thoughts--  “Please don’t.”

“She likes you.”

“Come on.  We work together.”  And thus everything Dorian was implying was totally off-limits regardless of John’s gut-churning fears of sabotage and imminent betrayal.

Fool me once and all that.

“‘John,’” Dorian said again in Valerie’s voice.  “‘Your fake leg is really sexy.’”

And, OK.  John had to laugh because that was pretty funny.  Disturbingly funny.  And the round of chuckles managed to ease away some of the mounting tension, which John appreciated wordlessly.

Still, a faint echo of Dorian’s smart ass comments followed him to the crime scene: “I’ve got an eye for you,” John informed Detective Valerie Stahl, revealing a disembodied MX eyeball in the palm of his hand.

“An eye for me.  That’s funny.”  Apparently, she enjoyed irreverent puns.

She probably wouldn’t enjoy learning that Detective John Kennex also had an eye _****on****_  her.

As he chucked the synthetic body part into the evidence container with the other MX bits, John mused, “A bit morbid making your MX hold the bin, isn’t it?”

“Oh, he can handle it.”  Turning to the MX, she asked, “Right?”

“Affirmative.  I can hold more than a metric ton which converts to--”

A computer spitting out calculations on command.  Valerie made a poor attempt to conceal her amusement at the remainder of its pedantic report and it didn’t even look offended.  If John had pulled the same stunt on Dorian -- if John had blithely made him the butt end of a joke while Dorian couldn’t retaliate -- John would never hear the end of it on the ride back to the station.

The cruiser.  It would rank right up there with the iron maiden.

Perhaps, in some bizarre way, that was why John found himself standing close to Dorian whenever they were in the same room together.  And when John was seated, he angled himself to include Dorian in whatever interaction was taking place between himself and whoever was speaking.  Dorian might have a computer somewhere in there, but John didn’t believe that that was all he was.

Dorian had once attempted to educate John on the difference between MXs and DRNs.  John really had been paying attention.  Dorian might not be able to function without software and subroutines, but those processes enabled him to interact with humans on a level the MXs couldn’t hope to achieve.  There was something like a person inside Dorian and John was damn well going to treat him like it.

Even if Dorian tended to treat John like he was a walking, talking, giant bag of dicks.  In all fairness, though, John was honest enough to admit he deserved it.  Toning down his sharp skepticism of Maya’s professed “talents” in front of her had earned John a warm smile from Dorian, which he’d pretended not to notice.  And if anyone else noticed how John orbited close to Dorian and kept Valerie in his sights during the brief conference with Rudy and Captain Maldonado, then John frankly did not give a shit.

Nor did he give a shit for Maya’s interpretation of his aura.  It was merely more fodder for Dorian to lob at him in future cruiser sessions aimed at exploring John’s shortcomings.  _****That****  _he could handle.  Predetermined fate… not so much.

So what if John was surrounded by anger and frustration and actively pushed people away?  That just meant he was successfully accomplishing his goal, God damn it.  What did it matter whether John wanted to be alone or not.  Getting InSyndicate mattered.  Compared to that goal, there wasn’t much that could take precedence.

Maya the medium psychic could spout whatever nonsense she liked (a light and people running, someone special, and bourbon of all things.  Jesus Christ.) but there was no way John was going to let Maya get away with labeling Dorian as “quiet” and “peaceful.”

“See, now I know you’re way off base because this guy is anything but--”

A van swerved into the cruiser’s path, tires screeching.  John slammed on the brakes -- masked and hooded figures leaped out of the van -- and John threw the vehicle into reverse, shouting, “Get down!”

Not just to the witness, but to Dorian.  Quiet, peaceful, obnoxiously tenacious Dorian who--

“I’m going out,” he declared.

Of course he was.  But-- “No, you can’t!” John shouted over the snap and thunder of bullets striking the car.  “You don’t have a chest plate!”

And then Maya was hit and John fired through the shot-out windshield, hitting one of their four assailants.  John was out of the car and returning fire before Dorian could stop him.  Before Dorian could remind him that John wasn’t wearing a vest and was no more invincible than Dorian was.

If Dorian noticed, he made no comment on it after the fact.  The van peeled away, three suspects at large, and MXs swooped in to secure the scene.  Dorian accompanied Maya to the hospital.  Perhaps because Dorian wasn’t around to witness it, John found himself speaking to the on-site MX as if it were a junior officer following orders: “I want you to turn this phone into a secure comm, OK?  Completely off police channels.”

No snide name-calling or resentment.

What the hell was wrong with him?

Whatever it was, John sure hoped it got fixed before somebody got hurt.

But, no.  It was already too late for that.

Yet again, John found one of his team members in danger.  He’d given up the Membliss when he’d crashed the cruiser, but weeks later Dorian had been seconds away from being put out of commission by the gunmen in the Sanderson Building.  Then, John had pushed for Rudy to go undercover as a cook in order to drawn out the Bishop.  And now Val.  She’d sent her location over a compromised channel; it had been John’s responsibility to keep her in the loop so that she could do her job safely, not be abducted.

God damn it.  He’d endangered his team members.  Again.  There was no way to make that right.  Not even with Valerie Stahl freed from the over-engineered clutches of Ethan Avery’s remaining clones, looking a little roughed up and a lot pissed off.

Instead of meeting her gaze, John stared after Dorian, who raced after the damaged van, reached out with a single hand, and flipped the entire vehicle.

It bounced and rolled like a discarded beer can before exploding into flames.

John squinted into the light.

“Did Dorian just flip that van?”  Valerie asked, stunned.

Indeed he had.  “Why hasn’t he done that before?” John muttered, mildly put out.  Was Dorian holding out on him?

John turned his attention toward cutting the ties from Valerie’s wrists.  “You OK?”

“Yeah, I’m OK.”

Maybe she was.  She kept bourbon in the top drawer of her desk, after all.  That made her OK in John’s book.

So few people were.  Even Maya, who was quirky and endearing, hadn’t rated higher than John’s public voice as he’d praised her bravery in court: “I think you did really great.”

He’d sounded like a damned infomercial salesman.

John kept his mouth shut as he and Valerie sipped bourbon and watched the game.  In the darkened portion of the squad room, the light on the screen flickered as players raced across the field--

Lights.  People running.  Bourbon.

Someone special.

John glanced toward Valerie.  Her attention was riveted upon the game recording.

Valerie was special.  Sure, even John could see that.

_****“Because he’s special.”** ** _

Sandra’s words.  She’d been talking about Dorian.

Yeah, he was special, all right.  Flipping an entire van.  Causing an explosion of flames.  Vaporized gasoline drifting on the breeze.  An android partner constantly coming at John, challenging him, forcing him to feel and think and _****talk.****_

God damn it.  This was why John didn’t pay attention to mediums or psychics.


	9. Unbound

“You took it too far, John.”  Dorian sounded disappointed.  Resigned.  As if he’d known all along that they’d end up scaring off a bunch of fifth graders.

“Bed wetters,” John judged of the field-trip rugrats who had winced and paled and puked at the sight of a waste of humanity who’d had his arm blown off.  It had only been a crime scene photo, for Christ’s sake.  They showed worse on prime time television.

Clearly, the fault lay with the kids because John didn’t take things too far; he didn’t misjudge humans even more grossly than Dorian.  Dorian might outrun and out-shoot John because he was an android and accuracy was his default setting, but John was the human here and this was a competition he could damn well win.  Or, at least lose less spectacularly at than Dorian.

That didn’t mean he was going to spend his whole day with his ass sitting at his desk, though.  Dorian never sat -- at least not while he was in the bullpen -- and, therefore, John didn’t need to, either.

John was the police officer here -- the human.  He took the lead, asked the questions, spoke for the department.  John was the one who took witness statements and trusted his gut and made the case gel on hunches and experience, both of which Dorian lacked.  It was John at the forefront.  That was how it was supposed to be, how it worked.  How it was going to work at this crime scene, too -- the most recent sighting of the XRN that was still on the rampage in the city.

Amazingly, there was a human witness left alive and coherent.  Maybe the bot had gotten bored with blatant carnage, but John was doubtful.  It wasn’t coincidence that had spared this grandfatherly robotics tech.

And now he was gazing at Dorian as if he were seeing a God damn unicorn in the middle of his scrapyard workshop.  John scowled at the sight of the assault victim’s hands cradling Dorian’s face and Dorian just… allowing it.  What the hell?

“Is there something I’m missing?” John bit out.  Being ignored didn’t sit well with him.  Nor did the eerily silent affirmation taking place between his partner and a stranger who should, by all rights, be a smear on the concrete floor right now.

“Detective John Kennex,” Dorian began and John instantly hated the formality and the reverence in Dorian’s distant tone.  “This is Dr. Nigel Vaughn.  He created me.”

John growled, “So you’re to blame.”  This man was to blame for the debacle of more than two years ago when a single XRN android had killed dozens of people -- twenty-six had been John’s fellow police officers -- and obliterated waves of MXs over the course of three days.

Shit, sitting down with Dorian in an empty interrogation room and explaining that whole sorry history had been one of the top ten things John had hoped he’d never have to do.  The way Dorian’s chin had dropped, eyes staring and skull shaking with a slight palsy twitch as he’d let John describe the fate of his kind: “Not long after they were integrated into the police force, the DRNs began to malfunction.  Their behavior became unpredictable.  Erratic.  Some of them even took their own lives because they just couldn’t cope with what they saw.”

This snowy-haired man with his beaming smile and gentle hands and grandiose intentions had caused all that pain.  Nigel Vaughn had released these childlike, innocent beings into a world filled with horror and agony and left them all to suffer, ill-equipped and abandoned.

And not unlike the God he imagined himself to be, Nigel Vaughn ignored his own culpability.  He deflected blame with all the zeal of a righteous deity, preaching to his choir of Rudy and Dorian: “I wanted to create life.”

Life, sure.  Plenty of death, too.  Even more civilians were killed at Bar Luxon.  And then Gorson and Hernandez went down in a hail of bullets and it was John’s absolute pleasure to dispose of that XRN once and for all.  Or, rather, it would be.  In retrospect.  Once John’s hip stopped throbbing.  His synthetic leg had provided one hell of a kick, sending the homicidal android into the building’s foyer just in time for the concussive force of the grenade blast to obliterate it.  But that hell of a kick had one hell of a kickback and John’s joints were sure feeling it.

Oddly enough, while Dorian could joke (between small spurts of electrical discharges arcing over his damaged components) about John’s prosthetic being better than a human leg and John could admit that the damn thing was maybe growing on him, it was Dorian who struggled over his own origins and what that might bode for the future.  The XRN was destroyed and Vaughn had slipped away from the police station, leaving Dorian standing in the wake of devastation.

“She malfunctioned.”

Had it?  John wasn’t so sure, but he wasn’t about to argue the point while Dorian’s heart was clearly breaking.  Despite popular misconception, John was fully capable of recognizing when he was toeing the edge of Taking It Too Far.

Voice soft and crumbling, Dorian breathed out, “She killed all those people, John.”

“You’re afraid that’s going to happen to you.”  It was unthinkable.  Ridiculous.  Terrifying.

John saw the chilling, silent horror reflected in Dorian’s expressive eyes.  “How could the same man who made her… make me?  She’s capable of all those things--”

“Dorian,” John rasped urgently.  So what if they were in the middle of the bullpen.  There were things Dorian needed to hear and he needed to hear them now.  “You’re not like her.  And you’re not like him--”

Dorian wasn’t a manipulative, deceitful, narcissistic maniac with a god-complex.  Once, John had feared Dorian’s ability to maneuver him, to endear himself to John.  A survival mechanism.  The android couldn’t help it.  But there was miles of difference between enlightened self-interest and blatant disregard for anyone or anything that bruised a madman’s ego.

Ego.  John had one of those, thank you very much.  And his had been smarting at seeing how quickly Dorian had embraced Nigel Vaughn with suspiciously automated trust.  Whereas John had had to work and bleed and sweat and snarl and snark for every moment of camaraderie.  But what was more, John was _****glad****_  their rapport hadn’t come easily or effortlessly.  Ego be damned.  That was what made it real.  What made it worth having.

“You’re you,” John insisted.  “And nothing’s going to change that.”

But if that were true, why did the bottom of John’s stomach vanish, dropping out, hollow with dread?

It was a sensation that revisited him when Dorian voiced his suggestion on the whereabouts of Nigel Vaughn: “What about over the Wall?  If you really didn’t want to be found -- to disappear off every grid -- that would be the place to go.”

Fear.  A hot flash and cold sweat.  No.  Dorian had to be wrong.  No way would anyone be that crazy.

Captain Maldonado backed John’s protest: “I think John’s right.  I don’t think he would go over the Wall.”

And there it was again -- that gravity-stealing drumbeat in the pit of his belly and, somehow, John just _****knew****_  that someday he was going to be proven wrong.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “standing in the wake of devastation” is from the song “Iridescent” by Linkin Park


	10. Simon Says

A doughnut, a cup of coffee, and the sight of Richard Paul being served a knuckle sandwich right in the face.  If only every shift started out so beautifully, John mused, lifting his coffee cup to cover a smirk.  And if this was the kind of show John could look forward to during brown-outs, he’d volunteer for duty on days of solar flares and energy shortages.

John watched the scuffle sort itself out, straightening up from where he was leaning back against the counter only after Paul decided to get nasty: “Let’s see what happens at your next fit-for-service review.”

Oh, yeah?  Well John had two words for Detective Richard Paul: _****Maya Vaughn.****_   Seriously, Dorian wasn’t the one who needed to get his shit together.  But John would keep that little stink bomb in reserve.  For now, he returned fire with a volley so dry and droll that not even sugar would stick to it: “OK, Captain Energy.  You can take your cape off.”

Dorian flat-out guffawed in Paul’s scowling face.

John should not find that as gratifying as he did.

“He’s obviously not fit for duty,” Detective Paul accused.

That was the very last thing Dorian needed to hear after Nigel God-damned Vaughn had just ripped open the scars and poured salt in the wounds of every cop on the force.  Dorian needed to be bombarded with narrow-minded doubt like he needed another scan of John’s balls.

John retorted, “I’d take a partially charged DRN over a fully charged MX any day.”  With a gentle slap to his partner’s lower back, John angled himself around Dorian’s side.  As John herded him toward the exit, putting himself between the detective and Dorian, he gave Paul a pointed look in passing.  Though John’s bemused grin made light of the incident, his body language spoke volumes: Dorian was off-limits and no way was anyone getting past John Kennex.  No way.

“I need my own space, John.”  They were back in the cruiser.  The over-share zone.

Oh, goody.  “Oh, come on.  Not this again.”

“Yes,” Dorian insisted with characteristic tenacity.  No way was Dorian’s personality interface suffering from his low charge.  All systems were nominal as far as John could tell.  This low charge business was just a convenient excuse.  “And we’re going to keep talking about it until you talk to the captain.”

“I talked to the captain,” John admitted.

“What did she say?”

God, did Dorian have to sound so eager?  John couldn’t look at him.  Couldn’t even glance over and meet that earnest gaze.  “She says you’re city property.  You have to be supervised.  Even when you’re off-duty.  That’s just the way it is.”  He’d cornered Sandra less than forty-eight hours after Dorian had first brought it up, timing the request to coincide with another closed case and spectacular performance by Dorian.  But even with the stars aligned, it wasn’t meant to be.  “I’m sorry.  I tried.”

Dorian swung away, baring his teeth at the cruiser windows.  Then he paused.

John braced himself.

“What about your place?”

And this, right here, was why John hadn’t brought up his chat with Sandra sooner.  This was why he’d been hoping to draw it out a little longer, stall for time.

“What--my place?”  The place where John had unknowingly harbored the enemy.  The place where a listening device had been planted and had presumably continued transmitting data for two years.  The place that wasn’t just on Anna’s radar but also InSyndicate’s.  The place where John -- the weak link, the bait, the patsy -- lived and breathed on borrowed time.  And the hell of it was that John couldn’t move without bringing all that potential danger with him to a new neighborhood.  He’d been in the cross-hairs of organized crime once.  Who could say they’d lost interest in him or anyone John allowed into his inner sanctum?

“What about the back room?” Dorian ferreted, squinting, lifting his chin in challenge.

No.  No, no, no.

_****“Because he’s special.”** ** _

Pelham was gone.  Cooper was dead.

John’s hands flexed tighter around the steering wheel.

He was not going to lose Dorian, too.

“That’s--that’s my trophy room.”

“That was high school, man.  Time to grow up.  Time to move on.”

Easy for him to say.  Dorian couldn’t see the big picture and John couldn’t let him.

So John regaled him with tales of his glory days until a call came in.  Bank robbery.  Suspect on the road.  “Show us responding,” John ordered and chased the perp down.  Handcuffed him in the street.  Watched, helplessly, when the bomb clamped around the man’s neck went off and there was nothing they could have done for him in the time they’d had.  Nothing they could do for Ramon Medina now except find his killer.

“Can you detect anything?” John prompted Dorian, hoping for trace evidence.

Laying a palm on the fender of Medina’s car, Dorian reported, “Traces of fentanyl oxide.  A toxin that causes temporary blackouts.”

“Fentanyl oxide,” John mused.  “That’s dangerous stuff.”

“This is dangerous,” Sandra had noted.  Weeks ago.  At McQuaid’s.

John bullied past the memory before his adrenaline spiked and Dorian picked up on it: “Could wake up, find an unwelcome roommate charging in your trophy room… have no idea how he got there.”

“Do I look like I’m in the mood, John?”

He looked offended, that was how he looked.  Well, he should be.  Dorian should believe that he was more important to his own damn partner than a shrine to long-lost youth.

Dorian added in a huff, “I’m vulnerable right now, man.”

John was well aware of that fact.  Which was why John was trying to protect him, damn it.

Still, a huffy Dorian was pretty hilarious.  Almost as entertaining as watching him lay into Detective Paul that morning and then proceed to very thoroughly explain how Paul had brought it upon himself.  Oh, man.  What a moment.  Dreams could come true.

Not for the former driver of this car, though.  The poor schmuck had never had a chance.  “Someone was filming this,” John noted, scanning the interior and counting up the cameras.

“That is sick,” Dorian opined.  “Who does that?”

Dorian straightened and--

_****BAM!** ** _

Flinching away from the sound of Dorian’s fist connecting with the roof of the car, John nearly shouted, “Dorian!  Will you stop punching things!”

Because once was funny, but the joke was getting old fast.  In fact, John was starting to doubt that Dorian had intentionally neglected to roll the window down before bellowing at the bank robber to pull over.  A harmless mistake, an oversight, the kind of thing easily glossed over in the pursuit of something worthwhile.

It happened again when John was caught up in a painfully tight sideways hug as Dorian sandwiched himself between John and the bomber’s second intended victim.  Jeannie Hartman was safe and John was clutching the deactivated and unclipped bomb collar in his far hand and Dorian was ecstatic with joy.

When John found himself cuffed to a park bench, it was the thought of Dorian’s messy and uninhibited happiness that coached John not to give in to mindless panic, skip over the little things, and die.  It kept him from saying “To hell with it” and shoving his pants down past his ankles, removing his prosthetic leg -- the one that Simon Lynch had shackled -- and trying to crawl away from the clueless bystanders meandering through the park.  Lynch would happily detonate the charge and John really didn’t want to die like that: an amputee in his underpants.  In public.

As John worked the token that he’d picked up off the pavement between the wires, eyes wide -- as though that would allow him to see better in the dim reflection provided by the polished case of the phone -- he tried not to uselessly dwell on his last conversation with Dorian.

_****“Hey, Dorian.  Why don’t you hang back?”** ** _

_****“Sargent Whiskers, I’m fully capable of doing what’s necessary.”** ** _

_****“I know you’re capable.  I just want you to conserve your charge, OK?”** ** _

_****“I can’t just hang back because I have a low charge.  I have a reputation to keep, you understand?  I was just starting to feel accepted by our fellow officers.  This is important to me.”** ** _

At the time, John had been relieved at Paul’s interruption.  He’d even urged -- with much sarcasm -- Paul and Dorian to just hug it out.

John should have stopped, blocked Paul out, and forced himself to face what he was hearing: _****“I was just starting to feel accepted by our fellow officers.  This is important to me.”****_

Our fellow officers.  Not _****my.****    ** **Our.****_

Fellow officers who watched Dorian, waiting for him to go crazy and snap.  Like the other DRNs.

Fellow officers who watched John, waiting for him to get careless or just plain get his coworkers killed.  Again.

John and Dorian.  Their fates were tied up in a snarl.  And John had walked away rather than acknowledge it.  He’d blundered right into Lynch’s path, and now the odds of getting himself out of this without ending up as park bench graffiti were vanishingly small.

It took all of John’s stupidly, tunnel-visioned determination to try -- to keep his shit together -- to fiddle with wires in the dark, and just try not to disappoint Dorian.

And then, when the bomb didn’t go off -- when Lynch didn’t detonate the charge and John miraculously clipped the correct wire and rendered the timer inert -- there was pure relief and John’s own manic laughter and, hell, he had even managed to hold onto a measure of self-respect and pride.

But there was no response from Dorian, whose eyes were completely black.  He’d used the last of his charge to scale the clock tower and take Lynch down.

John told himself he was happy with a metaphorical hug.

Besides, Dorian was just an android.  It was better for everyone if John acted like it.

Still…  “I’ve got a favor to ask you,” he said to Sandra over glasses of scotch in the quiet of her office.  Dorian was still charging and John knew better than to let himself be alone right now in the wake of adrenaline and last thoughts and final regrets and his own mortality jamming his heart into his throat.  When John had hovered at her office threshold, she hadn’t asked why he’d turned down his coworkers’ offers to go out and unwind.  She hadn’t turned him away with the blatant truth that she was busy and her work was never done.  She’d nodded for him to come in and sit down and have a drink.

Taking a deep breath, John dived in.  “Dorian wants to move in with me.  Keep a charger in my back room.”

Sandra didn’t look surprised, but her brows lifted.  “What do you want?”

“Not an encore of what happened to Pelham or Cooper.”  John looked down into his drink, swirling the liquid idly and churning up a current of aromas.

“He’s the android, John.  That’s his job -- to look out for you.”

“He’s not an MX.”

Her lips twitched.  “No, he isn’t.”

“And he wouldn’t like the decor at my place.”  When Sandra didn’t ask, John knew she was aware of the doll.  Anna’s cute little souvenir.  The listening device.  Hell, maybe Sandra had known all along.  Maybe it had been left there on purpose to lull InSyndicate into thinking the police really were that gullible and under-equipped to fight back.  Maybe that was why Sandra had never discussed cases over the phone during John’s convalescence.  Maybe John was right to think he was an uninformed part of an op intended to drawn in InSyndicate.

John didn’t ask.  He didn’t need a choice.  As Sandra had said on his first day back to work, John was the only one more desperate than her to see this gang go down in flames.  If that meant he wasn’t in the need-to-know, then fine.

“What did you have in mind?” Sandra asked, head cocked to one side as she made no promises that John’s place really was surveillance-free and safe and not a set-up.

“I was thinking… Rudy’s lab.”  And because it wouldn’t be surprising at all for a lone DRN to be housed separately from the department’s fleet of MXs -- and because a robotics lab would be the logical place for an android when it was unneeded -- Captain Maldonado approved.

It was half-assed.  John couldn’t give Dorian everything that he’d asked for, but John had listened to him and he’d tried and, for now, that was the best he could do.

When Dorian came back online, the activation wand in John’s hand, neither said a word even though John realized that Dorian had plunged into darkness up on that clock tower without knowing if John had survived.  Dorian had a full charge now; there were no spontaneous hugs.

That almost made it easier to leave a doubtful and apprehensive Dorian to the enthusiastic mercies of his new roommate Rudy.  John gave a thumbs up as he backpedaled from the room.

Sliding into the squad car, John slumped behind the wheel and swore.  Dorian wasn’t stupid.  John had totally just used his public cover in the lab.  Fake and over the top.

It was only a matter of time before Dorian figured it out.

John just hoped InSyndicate would make their move soon.  Before both John and his excuses were worn thin enough to see through.


	11. Disrupt

John Kennex was a liar.

All humans were and it was important that Dorian see that.

It was equally important for John to see how Dorian dealt with it.

With a brief, tentative poke to John’s upper arm, Dorian drew his attention from the message on his phone toward Dorian’s earnest expression.  “You shouldn’t have lied about Detective Paul’s health.”

Maybe not, but couldn’t a guy have a little fun?

Dorian added, “I heard what you said about his surgery.”

Well, that there just proved that Dorian had only heard _****one****_  of the stories John had told so far.  Otherwise, the android would have used some sort of plural in there somewhere.  Still, there was a bigger issue at the moment: “How do you know I’m lying?”

“I looked at the roll call.  It says only ‘personal day,’” Dorian replied.

Of course Dorian would believe everything he read or heard that had a department seal of approval on it.  Jesus.

“Yeah, but doesn’t that make you curious?”  It should.  If it didn’t, then what the hell was Dorian doing playing at detective, anyway?

“No, it makes me think it’s personal.”

Ah hah.  John could see where this was going.   _ ** **Personal****_  was only a nuance away from _****private****_  and Dorian had already been very vocal on his feelings toward Rudy’s uninvited excursion into Dorian’s headspace.  John hadn’t seen Dorian so animated and impassioned and adamant about anything since his epic low-charge day.  Not counting that, the last time John had seen Dorian so thoroughly flustered had been their rocky first day as partners when Dorian had taken the initiative to tell John precisely what his problem was.

Know-it-all android.

Who, for once, didn’t seem to know very much at all.

“I lied to him,” Rudy told John days later when all the dust had settled from Emily Wilson’s hacker reign of terror.  At some point -- John was unclear exactly when -- Rudy had noticed an irregularity during Dorian’s diagnostic.  The drama from the other day had sprung from Rudy’s attempt to extract shadow files from Dorian’s processing core and had gotten caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

But now John could see why Rudy had taken the risk.  And he could admire the man’s ability to deflect and distract and flat-out fib to a walking, talking lie detector.  One of Dorian’s many talents.

And now this: organic human memories that someone had put there a long time ago, deep down and hidden, possibly from before Dorian had been decommissioned the first time.

This was upsetting.  Rudy was one of the best and if it had taken Rudy this long to clue in, then…

Either someone even more devastatingly brilliant than Rudy had done this or it had been someone who had had both access to and intimate knowledge of Dorian.

And then there was the timing of the thing.  Why was this coming to light now?

John’s gaze swept over the lab.  He’d have to check the logs, and he wasn’t sure he could trust that they hadn’t been selectively recorded over with looped images, but John knew for certain that at least one unvetted visitor had been in these rooms recently: Nigel Vaughn.

When he’d come back here to retrieve the Synthetic Souls, had he fiddled with Rudy’s set up?  Unleashed the equivalent of an executable file that would, for lack of a better word, unzip these memories in Dorian the next time he’d come in for a diagnostic or software patch?

John didn’t ask.  Didn’t bother.  Rudy would have thought of this already and they didn’t have much time to get to the heart of the matter: “Is he in any danger?”

Immediate danger.  In danger of malfunction.  That was what John meant to say.  It was obvious that Dorian was in plenty of danger if Nigel Vaughn or his InSyndicate pals were behind this.

Rudy shook his head.  “I’ve removed them all and I’ve closed the insertion point so that whoever did this won’t be able to access him in the same way again.”

John stepped away, took a moment to run through the contingencies.  In each one, he was woefully out of his depth.  They needed to let Dorian in on this.  Surely, Dorian would be the one best qualified to monitor himself, wouldn’t he?  And besides, didn’t he have a right to know about his own vulnerabilities?

“We have to tell him.”

“No!”  Rudy just about leaped at John, as if John had his finger poised over some sort of big, red, Do Not Touch button of doom.  “We can’t tell anyone.  Not until I’ve figured out what’s going on.  If this gets out, people will think he’s malfunctioning like the other DRNs and they could decommission him.”

Shit.  “What do you want me to do?”

“You need to keep an eye on him, John.  We both do.  Somebody planted these images in Dorian’s head for a reason.  We need to find out why.”

John gazed over Rudy’s shoulder at the loop playing on the monitor, committing as many details to memory as possible, and then he followed a hunch.

Leaning heavily on the fogged glass of an empty interrogation room at the precinct, John stared at the tablet in his hands, scanning Nigel Vaughn’s medical history.  When Dorian’s creator had been six years old, he’d been hospitalized after coming down with a particularly nasty strain of influenza.  A week in an isolated ward.  The hospital had surely undergone refitting and remodeling since then -- if the building was even still standing -- and there was no way John could know for sure if little Nigel had had an affinity for toy trains as a kid, but the records didn’t disprove John’s theory.

More and more, it was looking like Nigel Vaughn hadn’t just built empathetic androids.  He’d built some kind of bipedal time capsule in which to house his own memories--

John startled so hard he knocked his elbow against the glass.

Memories or youthful hubris?

Jesus Christ.  Nigel’s creation was even called Dorian.

Dorian Gray.  The Picture of Dorian Gray.  That old nineteenth-century novel about a man who had found a way to transfer every single one of his sins onto a portrait of himself.  A story that ended with death.

_****Let me be wrong.** ** _

Because if John’s instincts were right, then that childhood memory wasn’t the only surprise Nigel Vaughn had in store for Dorian.

John dropped the tablet onto the conference table with a clatter and scrubbed both hands over his face.

God fucking damn it all to Hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, we're now building up some plot things that will lead in to the second fic of this series. (^_~)


	12. Beholder

A cinnamon doughnut and a cup of black coffee.  The perfect comfort food and just what the doctor ordered after a very long night of not sleeping.  There hadn’t been any point in forcing himself to stay home with his thoughts, so here John was, lounging in front of his assigned terminal before even the androids trotted in.  Being able to put his feet up on the desk was just a bonus.  A minor show of retaliation: he didn’t want to be here this early and he wasn’t bothering to keep that little fact to himself.

What made it worse was Dorian picking up John’s cell and taking Samantha’s call.

God damn it.

Talking to her yesterday had been awkward enough.

Not talking to her through Dorian was almost worse.

“Would you like me to relay her message?” Dorian asked pleasantly after hanging up.

“No, no, I think I got it,” John groused, abandoning the last three precious bites of doughnut.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

No, John would not, but if he didn’t, Dorian might focus on who Samantha was and why John’s phone was on a first-name basis with her phone number.

“Samantha and I had dinner last night,” John began, presenting his side of the story.  “And the hologram of her roommate and her mom and her therapist.  Every single call she got, she took.”

“She holo-blocked you.”

“Exactly.”  And this was John’s cue to spew out a rant that Dorian would gleefully pick apart until shift started and they could focus on work: “I mean, whatever happened to two people just sharing a meal and connecting, you know?”

“I know.”

“You wouldn’t know.  Why am I asking you?  You wouldn’t have a clue.”  OK, maybe that had come out a little too harsh but, damn it, last night had been rough.

Harsh and rough seemed to be the order of the day.  Days.  This whole Beauty Killer case had John on edge -- who the hell killed people in order to steal parts of their faces?  Jesus.

Not even a little friendly back-and-forth in the cruiser over the collapse of over-tech’ed society and a bonding moment at Rudy’s lab could balance the scales for John.

“You know it’s OK to have flaws, John,” Dorian volunteered as they drove away from the cosmetic surgery clinic.  John was more than ready to leave A Perfect You far, far behind.

“Whatever helps you sleep,” John said before he could think better of it.

“It is said that the more flaws you have, the more human you are.”  There was a dramatic pause.  “Have I told you how very human you are lately?”

Cute.  Real cute.  “You know, sometimes when you’re doing this--”  John hand-puppeted a yapping mouth.  “--I’m not really listening,” he confessed with a half-shrug.

Dorian ignored the opening.  There were a million comebacks for that and John got nothing but silence.

John had come to hate the silence.  “I don’t have that many flaws,” he muttered, because yes, damn it, John did listen to Dorian even when he shouldn’t.  Especially when he shouldn’t.  Case in point: right now as Dorian obligingly provided a list of John’s physical quirks.

“At least it’s my face,” John retorted.  “I know where I come from.  You’re a composite.  Who knows where you come from.  Just think about that.”

Which was what John had been doing ever since Rudy had read him in on the organic human memories Dorian shouldn’t be seeing let alone identifying with.  Jesus.  John could still hear Dorian’s words in the cruiser after they’d finished interviewing Kay Stenson at Synturion: “It felt like me, but it wasn’t… I was a child, John.”

That nightmare had been bad enough the first time around.  Seeing Rudy on the verge of panic had made the acid in John’s stomach slosh.

“You chew with your mouth open,” Dorian continued doggedly as they approached DiCarlo’s turf in Chinatown.  “You lie about putting gel in your hair, and you snore.”

“How do you know I snore?” John demanded before the implication could fully register.  The last thing he needed was a spike in his heart rate--

“Your smartbed told me.”

“Oh.  I didn’t realize you two had a relationship.  What else did it tell you?”  It was too late to play this off or distract Dorian.  If Dorian really was talking to John’s apartment and appliances remotely, then it was only a matter of time before--

“I don’t know.  Whatever it was, I purged it from my data.  Apparently, I didn’t want to remember.”

“Good.”  Very good.  Either Dorian had been bluffing about chatting with John’s smartbed or Dorian had a self-preservation subroutine looking out for him because the last time John had checked, his place was labeled “War Zone: Pending Activation.”

It seemed like no one was looking out for John, though.  Not even Dorian.  And maybe John had missed that part of Sandra’s Welcome Back To Work speech, but John was pretty sure his survival was tucked into Dorian’s job description.  Somewhere.

Not here and now, apparently.

The unlicensed face surgeon -- Dr. Curtis McCann -- had given himself an adrenaline-induced heart attack before John could do more than choke and wheeze out a request for help.  The hell.  Had Dorian’s x-ray powers told him that the man was about to topple over and he’d decided to save his charge for CPR instead?  So what if John’s trachea got crushed in the meantime by freakishly strong hands.  That was probably Dorian’s idea of a job perk.

And then the guy died anyway and Dorian had the nerve to look apologetic.  Unbelievable.

“Dude!” John wheezed, resisting the urge to continue massaging his squashed larynx.  “The hell was that?  Did your scanners not pick up on the officer in distress?”

“According to Urban Dictionary, Guy Code rule number twenty-three states that a guy is not required to intercede in a fight between his friend and a stronger opponent if, within the last twenty-four hours, the guy has thought to himself that his friend deserves an ass whoopin’.”

“You--what?  What the hell, man?  What did I do to deserve an ass whoopin’?”  John held up a hand.  “Wait.  You actually looked up Guy Code?”

“Of course I looked it up, John.  You were very distressed by my candid comments to Samantha.  In fact, having read the code, I now understand where most of your irritation with me stems from.”  Dorian grinned.

John, befuddled, mumbled, “I can’t decide whether to ask why this makes you happy or what I did to get on your bad side today.”

“Don’t worry, John.  You’ve been forgiven.”  Nodding towards the fallen doctor still sprawled out on the floor, Dorian explained, “You’ve suffered enough.”

Forgiveness for an unspecified slight.  It left John feeling off-balance and somewhat disappointed.

The whole case was one letdown after another: Dorian couldn’t imitate McCann’s voice over the phone, a missed opportunity to ID a caller who might have been their suspect.  At least no one else had died before John’s hunch -- that the killer had access to Lower Term DMV records -- could point Val in the direction of Erik Latham.

But then more disappointments: Latham slipped past them when they raided the guy’s apartment.  Plus, Dorian needed _****more****_  time to track the IP address of the woman Latham had been in daily contact with.

Luckily, it turned out that John didn’t have to wait for an address and ID.  Tellingly worn carpet hinted at too much time spent gazing at the woman across the way from the window.  Classic Stalker 101.

John rallied the troops and they intercepted Latham at the apartment across the way.  Finally, one God damn thing appeared to be going right.  A brief pursuit found John on the roof of Judy’s building and Latham was talking and John was listening and--

And then Latham was tipping back over the ledge, plummeting to his death and, God damn, it really had been a pretty terrible couple of days all around.  Yeah, it was protocol not to overwhelm a potential jumper with a show of police and John had engaged the man first, but he really would have appreciated having Dorian right there.  Dorian could have talked the guy down like he’d talked Emily Wilson down at Synturion.

Damn but John hated losing.

“You OK?”

John straightened up from leaning over his desk monitor, looking for a way to either twist the screws tighter or lighten the load, and almost answered Dorian before he’d even clocked the fact that Dorian had taken the initiative to ask if he was OK.  John could count the number of times that had happened on one hand.  It was usually the other way around: John asking Dorian.  “Yeah.  Yeah, I’m OK.”

John watched as Dorian swung around to face him right there in the middle of the bullpen and muse, “Do you think that with all the people in this city -- in the world -- that there’s someone out there for everyone?”

John didn’t even have to think about it.  “I do.”

Dorian grinned.  “That’s old-fashioned.”

“That’s me.  Old-fashioned.  Even my robot is discontinued.”

And in a flat tone, John’s robot asked, “Do you want me to come to a bar with you and watch you drink?”

Such enthusiasm.  Record-breaking.  “No, that’s OK.  That, uh, got a little weird last time.”  When everyone at McQuaid’s had assumed Dorian and John were on a date.  Awkward.

Dorian clearly remembered.  A genuine smile and silent laugh.  Damn.  If John could pull a look like this from an android, why wasn’t he managing similar results with humans?

Maybe it was time to try.

But he wasn’t going to get any practice at it with Valerie Stahl.

Oddly enough, John felt relieved watching her and Jake Bellman head out to Leo’s for drinks.  John had been just that close to making a mistake.  A move that would ultimately have been uncomfortable at best and deadly at worst.

InSyndicate was still out there and Sandra still had John in play.  So he people-watched at the waterfront for a bit, remembering what it felt like to be warmed by human connection rather than just a thermal-lined jacket.

Yeah.  Well.  Human connection was over-rated, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie -- it took me forever to come up with a theory for why Dorian and John seem to run hot and cold in Episode 12: Beholder. There will be an explanation (in Part 2 of this fic series) for who Samantha is and why John had dinner with her. Meanwhile, Dorian is trying to integrate Guy Code with the other cues he has gotten from John and they don't quite match up. (More on this in -- you guessed it! -- Part 2 of Necessary Sacrifice.)
> 
> EDIT: Why is Dorian so happy that John gets aggravated with him over Guy Code violations? Because it means that John sees Dorian as a male person. (Because John would never hold an MX to Guy Code standards, right?) Personhood is an important part of this fandom, so I hope you enjoy how John and Dorian eventually deal with it. (^_~)


	13. Strawman

“Oh, good.  You’re done.  That took a long time,” John remarked offhandedly as he steered Dorian away from the bullpen, still shrugging into his jacket.

“Did it?”  Dorian’s bright smile faded.  “Like, longer than usual?”

“Way longer,” John lied with a straight face.  God, this was going to be so much fun.  Way more fun than sitting in a swivel chair dispassionately listing Dorian’s achievements to the review board.  Playing it cool and disinterested because no way was John going on the record blubbering about how much Dorian meant to him.  No way in hell.

“So, tell me.”  Dorian started in as soon as they were on their way to the scene of their next case, “What did they ask about me in the interview?  Tell me what you told them.”

“Wish I could but, you know, peer reviews are confidential.  Department policy.”

“Seriously?  You’re not going to tell me anything?”

“I told them the truth.”

“OK, yeah.”  Dorian looked entirely too happy.  “That’s good.  Thank you, my friend.”

“I told them you have no concept of personal space or boundaries,” John informed him with an outraged glower.  “That you scanned my balls.  That you abducted a DRN from a hospital and caused millions of dollars worth of damage--”

“I befriended that DRN--”

“Befriended?  You abducted him.  And,” John barreled onward, talking over Dorian’s retort, “that you like to expose yourself while riding shotgun in the cruiser.”

“You asked to see it.”

“I didn’t ask!” John nearly shouted.  “You showed it to me!”  And there John rested his case.

A moment of silence followed and then Dorian said, very quietly, “I apologize for scanning your balls.”  He then rallied, “You did ask to see--”

Before John ended up hearing a recording of his own voice played back to him, he smacked Dorian’s shoulder with the back of his hand.  “I’m messing with you.  I didn’t say any of that.”

Dorian stared at him for a moment before looking away with a relieved smile curving his lips.

“Should’ve,” John growled because the longer this InSyndicate shit dragged out, the tighter John was winding up.  It was going to go down.  Soon.  John could feel it.  And with every passing day, he was more and more certain that Dorian would get caught in the cross fire.

Maybe he’d be better off decommissioned on a shelf somewhere in Rudy’s lab.  Like John had said a while back -- Dorian was discontinued.  There were only so many replacement parts.  And if the confrontation with InSyndicate didn’t do him in, it was only a matter of time before police work and gun fights and daring rescue attempts wore Dorian down.

John recalled the secondhand bio-mech hearts case -- the illegal transplant and extortion racket run by a crematorium employee.  After his arrest, Henry Mills had sneered at Dorian: “Probably think it’s amusing, huh?  All us humans running around, trying to get more time.  Must be nice to have all the time in the world.”

John hadn’t been there in the interrogation cube at the time, and it was lucky for Henry Mills that he hadn’t.  They would’ve had to do a facial reconstruction before the asshole could pose for his booking photo.

From the look on Dorian’s face -- what John had seen of it upon reviewing the cube footage -- Dorian was well aware of his impending “death.”

“Hey, dead is dead,” John had told him weeks later following the attempted palladium heist.

So when Rudy texted John about Dorian’s review board call-back, John got in touch with the chairman.  John hadn’t needed to introduce himself.  He’d been in the police academy with the guy.  He’d seen him at Cooper’s funeral service.  They’d agreed to raise a glass in their fallen comrade’s honor at some unspecified point in the future.

Now was that point.

“Hey, Kennex.  Is it time for that drink?”

“Yup.  I’m buying.”

And as John contemplated his third drink of the night -- the first had been bourbon lifted in a toast to Coop followed by a beer and a recounting of misadventures from their academy days -- he now cleared his throat to--

“So.  Here we are.  Timing is everything.”

“Yeah,” John agreed and suddenly thought back to what he’d told Dorian about his father during their stakeout of the homeless shelter: _****“**** ** **He’s the reason I became a cop.”****_

“You heard about the DRN’s call-back, I take it.”

John nodded.

“You want to amend your statement?”

John said baldly, “I wouldn’t still be a cop if it weren’t for Dorian.”

They both contemplated the words.  Their table was a small, silent island buffeted by the sounds of a bar slowly winding up for a long night of carousing.

“I wouldn’t advise going on-record with that.  Unless you want--”

“I don’t want Dorian to be a target.”  John cleared the gruffness from his throat.  “At least not -- not more than he already is.”

“Hm.  Captain Maldonado was very clear on the fact that she couldn’t say much, but she did state that she thought you’d be good for each other.”  With a grin, he added, “And you’re still with us, so…”

“Captain Maldonado made the right call.”

Nodding, John’s old friend promised, “Then I’ll take care of it.”

And that, right there, terrified John because that, right there, implied that Dorian had somehow failed his android officer review.  Or had been very, very close to it.  “Thanks, man.”

The chairman of the annual android officers’ review committee shrugged.  “Just doing the right thing.  It wasn’t entirely clear from the transcripts, you know?”

John looked up.  “Yeah.  A lot gets lost in translation.”

“Just promise me one thing, Kennex.  You’ve got to let Dorian do his job.  Make the sacrifice if that’s what it comes down to.  Don’t make me come back here and raise a glass in your memory.  At least not for a long time.”

John huffed.  “I’ll see what I can do.”

John made a point of not being anywhere near the precinct while Dorian sat down for his followup interview.  The obnoxious android found him anyway.  Damn it.  Whenever John tried to show a little indifference, Dorian started acting like a puppy following him around, tracking his locator chip.  No sense of boundaries at all.

“I need to have that thing dug out,” John groused as Dorian angled closer, revealing a wrapped parcel.  A prosthetic limb -- a right leg that, just from eyeballing it, John would guess had been made to fit him personally.  Dorian called it an expression of gratitude.

“The review board gave me my final recommendation based on your glowing review.”  Dorian beamed.  “My term has been extended.”

“’Glowing’ is a bit of an exaggeration.”  A huge exaggeration.  If Dorian had watched the interview log or read the transcripts, he would have known that.

“Open it,” Dorian insisted, gently bouncing the leg.

“I wonder what it is,” John joked sarcastically.

Dorian gleefully hinted, “It’s a leg.”

Jesus.  “Never mind.”

As John poked into a crease of wrapping paper, Dorian expounded on the synthetic limb’s features which basically amounted to increased comfort and mobility.

In exchange for keeping Dorian close at his side and in constant danger, Dorian was giving John the ability to be even more independent.  Of all the selfless asshole gifts.

John blinked away the tears while Dorian was scanning the crowd, the noodle vendor, the clouds of steam in the makeshift kitchen.

“This model will not even be on the market for the next few months, but I got Rudy to pull some strings.”

Rudy, huh?

John cleared his throat.  “I don’t--thank you.”

“Hope you like it,” Dorian said, leaning close as if sharing an in-joke.  Hell, maybe it was.  John hadn’t forgotten the time he’d stabbed his current synthetic leg with a utility knife.  He’d been more sorry about ruining a perfectly good pair of jeans than damaging expensive circuitry.  “Listen, I know I’m not human and I can never be what Pelham was to you--”

“Hey.  Dorian--”

“I get it.  I really do.  But I’m glad Maldonado put us together.”

John was, too.  The words crowded together in John’s throat and cemented into an immovable block.  Shit.

“Am I really the reason you want to stay on the force?”

“I--uh, no.  I never said that.”

“To the interviewer you did.”

“Um, no, no.  I didn’t.  He must have heard me wrong.”

“That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.”  Dorian’s lips mashed together in a fierce frown, brow furrowed, chin tucked, posture curved with exquisite agony.

“Dude, don’t.  Please.  Don’t do that.”

“I was made to feel, John.”

“Oh, man.”  At least Dorian didn’t have tear ducts.  “Unbelievable.”

And when duty called, pulling John away from a steaming bowl of noodles, John nearly left Dorian and Rudy’s gift behind.  But he turned around and rushed back to collect it.  Gladly.  Because John should make an effort to show Dorian how it really was: John listened when Dorian spoke and he accepted the things Dorian gave him because Dorian mattered.

But there was something whirling slowly at the back of John’s mind.  Words that struck him off-kilter: “Let Dorian do his job.  Make the sacrifice…”

Sacrifice.  Why did that sound familiar?

John had the uncomfortable suspicion that the answer was going to come to him at the worst possible time.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoy something in the story (or if you'd like to chat or discuss), don't hesitate to leave a comment. Comments are beautiful and kudos are much appreciated! (^_^)


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